"You can’t pick plums in a desert."

Detective Nero Wolfe in Rex Stout Plot it Yourself

"A wise observer has said that young people will give their lives for an exclamation point, but they will not give their lives for a question mark."

Richard John Neuhaus in First Things #169 (Jan. 2007)

"When we are asked why eggs turn to birds or fruits fall in autumn, we must answer exactly as the fairy godmother would answer if Cinderella asked her why mice turned to horses or her clothes fell from her at twelve o’clock. We must answer that it is magic. It is not a 'law,' for we do not understand its general formula...."

G.K. Chesterton in “The Ethics of Elfland” in Orthodoxy quoted in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 11 #3 (Nov.-Dec. 2007)

"As Mr. Pond knows, the last lesson of the wise man is that the fool is sometimes right."

Steve Miller in Gilbert Magazine Vol. 9 #6

"The pessimist complains about the wind; the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails."

William Arthur Ward, quoted as "Thought du jour" in "Social Studies" in Globe and Mail Dec. 1, 2003

"The narrowest hinge on my hand puts to scorn all machinery."

Walt Whitman, quoted in John Stewart Collis, Living With A Stranger: A Discourse on the Human Body

 "I may be dumb, but I’m not stupid."

Terry Bradshaw, quoted in Gilbert! magazine Jan.-Feb. 2002

William "Blake could do so many things. Why is it that he could do none of them quite right?"

G.K. Chesterton, quoted by Dale Ahlquist in Gilbert! magazine Vol. 5 # 3 (December 2001)